Interview By Annabel Chiarelli
ANNABEL: A popular stance in subtle activism work is that of the “spiritual warrior battling against dark forces.” You have cautioned against this, and I’d like to hear your thoughts about why it’s so important not to fall into that trap, as well as your thoughts on the nature of “dark” energies or forces and the band of negative energy you call “The Scream.” Do they have some kind of independent malevolent agency of their own or are they fueled by plain old human greed, hatred, aggression, and lust for power?
DAVID: Let me begin by saying that before I became a spiritual teacher when I was twenty, I was studying in college to become a molecular biologist. Thus, even today, fifty years later, I still tend to think in biological and ecological terms and metaphors. These are the metaphors I draw on to answer your questions.
The sources of evil in the human world are complex because humanity is complex. It's not as if there's a single entity who is the source of all malevolent and negative forces and actions, inspiring--if that's the right word--human beings to acts of violence and hurtfulness. As you rightly suggest, much of what motivates us to act in ways harmful to others, to the world, and to ourselves are simply unresolved and negative patterns and habits in our own psyches. It's our own greed, our own fear, our own lusts, and so forth. This is often quite enough to create the problems we see in our world.
What I call "the Scream" is a layer of negative energies in the subtle borderlands close to the physical plane that is the product of our own negative projections and actions. I think of it as a kind of psychic smog which in some cases is simply irritating but in others is truly toxic, just as pollution can be in the physical world. By itself, it doesn't actively or willfully seek to expand or promote its conditions; it has no agency. But given the right conditions, it can spread just as physical pollution can spread unless steps are taken through energy hygiene to prevent it or to clean it up. For instance, if an angry, vengeful energy exists in an area, people can pick up on it, feel their own anger amplified or augmented, and then add to it through their own actions and projections. We are the agency through which this psychic pollution makes itself felt and can grow.
It's important to understand that it's not making us do this. But it does create psychic or subtle energetic conditions that can make it easier for us to choose to go along with those conditions because of elements and habits in our own psyche. We can resist, and we can transform such subtle conditions if we choose to do so and are willing to do the inner and outer work of emotional, mental, and even physical hygiene that may be involved. In other words, we can choose love over hate, courage over fear, respect over contempt, and so on. It can be work to do so and not always easy, but that's the kind of work our souls call on us to do!
This is not a matter of fighting anything. I don't "fight" pollution. I recognize it and then I clean it up. I can be deliberate and focused in this cleansing process--I hesitate to use the word "aggressive"--but I am not being a "warrior," except in the sense that I am courageously standing in the midst of the pollution and not running from it.
But as a biologist, I know that any environment, including toxic ones, can become niches for opportunistic organisms which may in themselves be toxic. For instance, a local beach on a lake near our home was closed down this summer for a time because sewage had leaked into it and pathogenic bacteria had been detected. People who swam in the water got sick.
There are subtle forces that feed on negative energies such as fear, hate, and so on. The ecology of such forces and beings is complex. For instance, there are bacteria in sewage that will make you very sick and even kill you if you take them into your body, but they are necessary to help process the sewage; they are part of the natural cycle of decay and transformation. There are subtle beings and forces like this, and left alone to do their work, they have no malevolent intent towards human beings. But human beings sometimes don't leave them alone and do invoke them, much as people use toxic bacteria to create bio-weapons. When this happens, such beings may be let loose into the energetic world of humanity and can become a hazard that has to be dealt with through appropriate steps of energy hygiene.
On the other hand, there are beings and forces that are simply malevolent in nature. Their origins are, as I say, complex, and many come into being as products of human thinking; they are potent thought-forms that have been created by someone specifically to do harm and then are released into the world. And some have origins deep in the primeval past of our planet.
What is common to all these "dark" beings and forces, though, is that, like any organism, they seek to create environments and conditions conducive to their nature. They seek safety and they seek food, and because they are subtle beings, both of these are energetic in nature. So in a worst case scenario, yes, forces and beings can arise that actively work to generate and maintain conditions of fear, hatred, anger, lust, and so on within the human world. These beings are truly parasitic as they require human complicity to create the environments they need, and once created, they will seek to trigger human emotions and thoughts along lines that will continue to generate the necessary negative conditions.
So, do I fight these beings? Again, I think here like a biologist. None of these negative forces can exist if the environment becomes inhospitable to them. But to change an environment can require a combination of energy hygiene or subtle activism and outreach and ordinary physical, psychological, and spiritual work with the humans involved so that they stop generating the energies that such negative inner forces use parasitically to maintain their existence.
This involves, to my way of thinking, an ability to create and hold the desired environmental conditions of love, Light, courage, respect, safety, and so on in myself first and then to expand those conditions outward through how I relate to the environment and the people in it. This is why I have trouble with militaristic metaphors. They may make us feel powerful and good about ourselves, but it's all too easy for us to slip into an adversarial stance that actually ends up feeding more negativity into the environment.
Clearing up the more extreme areas of subtle toxicity is not a simple process, and there is truth to the idea that I want and need to stand in my sovereignty in a courageous and warrior-like way. Even something as relatively passive as the polluted psychic energies in the Scream can resist being changed. There can be some pushback, and I need to be prepared for this. If I'm dealing with a force or being whose current existence is dependent on a hateful, negative environment, then that pushback can be fierce. So I need to be clear, strong, stable, and above all loving in my ability to hold the qualities of the environment I wish to create. I'm not a warrior wielding a weapon of Light, but I am a "warrior" wielding a stout heart, courage, presence, and a fiery hope! (And as an aside, I shouldn't attempt dealing with such negative organisms unless I do have the skill, the knowledge, and the connections to deal with the possible pushbacks and consequences. I don't wade into the toxic water of a lake to clean it up unless I know what I'm doing, understand the nature of what I'm dealing with, and have the right equipment to help me.)
Are there malevolent dark forces seeking to take over the world? No, not in the sense of a centralized, vast planetary conspiracy. But are there "dark" subtle organisms that would like to expand the negative environment that protects and feeds them? Of course! It's what organisms, whether physical or non-physical, do. We don't need to "fight" them in a militaristic sense, at least not as a general rule--there can always be local exceptions--but we do need to be strong and clear about the kind of physical and subtle environment we wish to have and use our agency to make it so, drawing on whatever spiritual and subtle allies are near and dear to us. In so doing, our "stance" really does need to be one of love, for love is at the heart of the best environments!
[After David sent this response, one of his subtle colleagues offered a contribution to our discussion]
SUBTLE COLLEAGUE: Blessings! This is an interesting discussion which caught my attention. As I'm sure you realize, you are only scratching the surface here. But I thought I'd contribute the following from my perspective. I am aware of three kinds of responses to three kind of forces and beings that are sources of negativity in your world. One is healing and redemption, one is recycling and restoration, and one is destruction.
In the first case, we seek to heal and redeem those who to us are suffering diseases and pathologies of the soul, internal habits and ways of thinking that promote harm, whether to self or to others. This can be a simple process or it can be a complex and lengthy one depending on the soul involved and the nature of its consciousness.
The second deals with the forces you think of as energetic or psychic pollution. These are vectors of energy that currently are harmful but which can be realigned and reorganized to be harmless and restored to a pristine condition. Altering the environmental conditions as you have described is usually sufficient to accomplish this.
Finally, there are those constructions of thought, feeling and energy that are wrongly made from the outset. There is no being here, and the energies that make up such constructs are bound to its shape and purposes. Here is where we wield what metaphorically you would call the Sword or Spear of Light to break up and destroy the construct, thereby allowing its energy to be freed and redeemed. Some of these constructs are very ancient, formed in the distant past, and by now they have gorged themselves on human negativity and seek more, for they have become simply black holes of energetic hunger, never able to get enough. They are unstable at their core, but they can be very resistant to change. They cannot be changed simply by altering the environment but must be broken up by the surgical application of Light.
However, as you have perceived, this cannot be done in anger or even in a prideful way as one wielding spiritual power. It must be done from a neutral and strong place of soul. When confronted with such a construct, we do not interact with it but act to destroy it if possible (and sometimes it is not possible as incarnate humans are actively supporting and maintaining it for their own purposes). Thus, there is no compassion for the construct, only implacable will, but there is love for the energy trapped inside the structure. When the organizing impulse of this construct, that which holds it together, is destroyed, then we receive the liberated energies in compassion and love and set about their redemption.
This is all I have to offer. I thought you would be interested in hearing the perspective of one not in the body.
Again, blessings!
Click on the links to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of this interview.
“We still have power, individually and collectively, to shape and respond to our present and future. I look outside my window now and wonder if I will still be in this wonderful place